Morning Ruckus
by Mira Martin-Parker
Look, God’s fighting with himself again. All ones and zeros. All lines and circles. Light and shadow, going at it. Look how he flails about. Talking to himself. Screaming as he walks up Market Street, heading straight for the subway. He’s going to get on the train like that. He’s going to get on the early morning commuter. He’s going to smell it up good and ripe with his unwashed madness. This Living God, embodied and raging at himself in front of all. Existence and non-existence, going crash bang smash. He shouts, pulling at his grass-filled hair. And on and on he goes, disturbing the mortgaged, with their massive monthly payments and their cups of single origin, scrolling downward through their iPhones, trying to ignore his shouts. “Won’t someone involve the police?” they think but dare not say. And so someone does, and it goes viral. God Arrested on the N Judah. “It happens like this every day,” one man complains. “Why can’t someone make the trains run peacefully and on-time for a change? Why do we always have to deal with this crazy shit?”
Mira Martin-Parker earned a BA at The New School for Social Research, and an MA in philosophy and an MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State University. Her work has appeared in various publications, including the Istanbul Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, great weather for MEDIA, and Zyzzyva. Mira’s collection of short stories, The Carpet Merchant’s Daughter, won the 2013 Five [Quarterly] e-chapbook competition.
